


we keep this love in a photograph

by luladannys



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Gen, post Image of Image
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 09:49:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5412284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luladannys/pseuds/luladannys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Flynn returns in the middle of the night to find, aside from Eve and Cassandra asleep on the bathroom floor, something that Eve has left on her desk.</p>
<p>(Alternatively titled: Actual Parents Flynn and Eve Taking Care of Their Hungover Daughter)</p>
            </blockquote>





	we keep this love in a photograph

**Author's Note:**

> THE TITLE IS CHEESY I KNOW. But titles are hard, I think we can all agree.

Eve made it into the bathroom after Cassandra with perfect timing, grabbing the other woman’s hair just before the vomiting started. A moment of horrific sounds later, Cassandra leaned back with a pitiful groan and Eve handed her some toilet paper to dab her mouth off on then flushed it all down.

“Tha-,” Cassandra started to say, then lurched forward again.

Eve sighed and kneeled down beside her to resume holding her hair. It seemed like this would last a while.

“For someone who didn’t actually drink anything, there is a lot coming out of you.”

“Can we please not talk about what’s coming out of me?”

“Yeah, sorry,” Eve replied and used the hand not holding the mass of red hair to rub Cassandra’s back.

The sound was bad enough, so Eve made every attempt to not actually _see_ what was happening right next to her. But then she heard a _splash!_ that was certainly not vomit.

“Uh-oh.”

The Guardian turned her head slowly, afraid to learn what might have gone _uh-oh_.

“Aw, Red, come on. Those were _my_ sunglasses.”

“I’m sorry,” Cassandra whined and dropped her cheek onto the rim of the toilet.

“It’s okay.”

The toilet needed to be flushed again, but Eve didn’t really want to do that with Cassandra’s face so close to the bowl. She coaxed the redhead up and pushed the handle down. The sunglasses got pulled to the bottom, but because they couldn’t fit down the drain they bobbed back up after the new water flowed in. Cassandra slumped back over the porcelain, resting her arm on the rim and putting her head back down on top of that.

“So bright now,” she mumbled.

“That tends to happen when you drop your – or, not your – sunglasses into the toilet.”

“ _Eeeeeve_.”

“Not helping, I know.”

She stood up and went to the light switch by the door, not exactly looking forward to dealing with a vomiting person in the dark, but then Jenkins, with that weird sense of always seeming to know just what they needed, appeared with a candelabra holding three lit white candles. He set it down on the countertop where the sink was and Eve turned off the light.

Jenkins left and Cassandra seemed to be alright for the moment, so Eve sat back against the wall beside the toilet and got lost in her own thoughts. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed before Stone and Ezekiel were hovering the doorway.

“How is she?” Ezekiel asked.

Cassandra groaned in reply.

“Sorry about the ta-,” Stone started to say.

“Don’t say ‘tacos’,” she interjected. “Oh, now I said ‘tacos’.”

She leaned forward and Eve once again took hold of her hair. Ezekiel smacked Stone’s arm like it was his fault Cassandra was throwing up again.

“We brought some stuff,” said Stone.

He set a glass of water and small collection of various pills and antacids on the counter. Ezekiel handed Eve a blanket and a hair tie, the latter of which she graciously pulled Cassandra’s hair into a ponytail with.

Ezekiel pointed into the toilet bowl. “Colonel Baird, aren’t those _your_ -”

“I said I was sorry!” Cassandra exclaimed, then clapped her hand over her exposed ear with a whimper.

“Do you need anything else?” Stone asked.

Cassandra moved the hand from her ear to hold a finger up to her lips. “ _Shhhh_.”

Eve smiled softly and turned back to the Ezekiel and Stone. _We’ll be fine_ , she mouthed and they backed out of the bathroom as quietly as possible. She opened up the blanket they had brought and draped it over Cassandra’s back.

* * *

Flynn stumbled in through the Back Door and brushed himself off. A few of the small desktop lamps were lit, but otherwise it was dark in the Annex, just as he had expected it to be. Although he had tried ordering himself not to, Flynn looked over at Eve’s desk and sighed at the mass of clutter piled upon it. He set down his bag and went over to at least make an attempt to shuffle all of the papers together so she wouldn’t have such a mess to clean up in the morning.

Except, then she would realize he had been there. He dropped the stack that he had gathered and the force sent more papers fluttering about, some falling to the floor. Flynn squatted down to pick them up and place them back onto the desk. Something had slid far away and he dragged himself across the floor to reach his arm under the cabinet in the corner to grab whatever it was.

When he pulled it out and saw what it was, he froze. It was a photo of him and Eve from the last time he had been there. He wondered who had taken it because they weren’t looking at the camera. They looked happy, something Flynn had not felt since the last time he walked through that door. He ran his thumb lightly over the glossy photograph with a sigh.

Flynn kept looking at it as he pulled himself up into the desk chair, unaware that several hours before Eve had held the exact same position. When he finally looked up, he noticed a flickering shadow against the wall and curiously went to go see what it was.

Down the little hall where the bathroom was, he found the source of the flickering light. There were candles lit on the counter. He went to grab them, but then he saw what else was in the bathroom.

Eve was sitting on the floor, her back against the wall, with her legs stretched out in front of her and her chin drooping to her right collarbone. Cassandra was curled up in a blue bathrobe with one matching slipper on and the other abandoned by the side of the toilet, her head on Eve’s lap and a blanket spread over her.

Flynn felt worry tighten his chest as he moved closer to see how pale Cassandra was.

“Eve?” he whispered.

She didn’t move, which he knew showed how long of a day she had had because she was usually quite a light sleeper. He kneeled down beside her and shook her shoulder gently.

Her head lifted a little bit and her eyes blinked open.

“Flynn?”

“What happened? Is it Cassandra’s -”

“No, no,” Eve answered before he even finished asking, knowing where his mind and worries had gone to. “She’s hungover. Real bad.”

“Hungover? Cassandra?”

His voice had gone up in shock and the young woman in question groaned softly and pressed her face into Eve’s leg.

“Long story. Help me move her?”

Flynn nodded and they worked together to lift Cassandra off of Eve. She pouted in protest and drowsily opened her eyes halfway.

“Am I drunk again or is that Flynn?”

“It’s him, now come on,” Eve said. “Upsie daisy.”

With Eve holding one arm and Flynn holding the other, they pulled Cassandra up to her feet. It was immediately obvious that, like most of her, her legs were not awake yet and they hurriedly each wrapped her arms around their shoulders to keep her from falling.

“Slipper,” Cassandra frowned, her head down as she looked at her feet.

“We’ll get it later,” Eve told her.

“Slipperrrrr.”

Flynn left Cassandra half-hanging from Eve for a moment to retrieve the slipper and slide it back onto her foot.

“Perfect fit,” she muttered as she seemingly fell back asleep standing up.

Eve shook her as Flynn took up Cassandra’s other arm again. “Nuh-uh, Cinderella, you need to walk for minute.”

Cassandra whined, so Eve and Flynn looked at each other and made the silent agreement to just drag her, which having the slippers on her feet made rather easy.

One of the cots had reappeared in the Annex, like the things that they needed always seemed to, and they deposited Cassandra onto it. She curled back up onto her side and Flynn covered her with the blanket again while Eve brought over a trash can to place in front of the bed in case Cassandra needed it. They both stepped back and watched her with a sigh.

“So…what happened?” Flynn asked.

“Eve jumped off a building,” Cassandra mumbled into her pillow.

“Hush, you,” her Guardian quickly said. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

“Sleep…”

Flynn turned to Eve as she watched the redheaded Librarian fall back into slumber. “What was that about you jumping off of a building?”

She shrugged. “Part of my job. I’m fine, they’re fine, and the day is saved.”

They stood silently, Eve with her arms crossed over her chest and Flynn with his hands in his pockets, both watching Cassandra sleep instead of facing their problems.

“Is there a reason that you’re here?” Eve finally asked.

“I, uh, I think I’ve found a lead on Prospero and needed to do some research.”

She nodded. They hadn’t looked at each other while talking, eyes still set on the body on the cot, but Flynn saw the movement from his peripheral.

“Did you come here in the middle of the night to avoid me?”

His face contorted as he stammered for an answer. “No? I wasn’t avoiding you, but I wasn’t not avoiding you. I just realized that it would be late here and thought it would be easier if you weren’t here, but I did want to see you.”

“Just pick an answer, Flynn,” she sighed exasperatedly.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I let you down. It’s hard for me to change and I know that that’s just an excuse, but I’m trying. I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too.”

They finally turned towards each other and Flynn grabbed one of her hands to place a kiss on her knuckles. She smiled softly and lifted her other hand to prod at a cut above his eyebrow, which made him wince.

“Go get whatever you need to research. I’ll get the first aid kit.”

They sat at the center table, Flynn simultaneously poring over the books he had gathered and filling Eve in on the information he had found out Prospero while she cleaned his small wound and placed a band-aid over it.

At one point, he posed a question to her and then realized that she had fallen asleep. Her head was resting on her arms and her breath was moving a tendril of hair back and forth. Flynn tucked it behind her ear and pressed his lips to her head. He carefully collected everything he had been working on from around her and returned the books to the Library. Then he slung his bag back across his body and set up the globe for the Back Door.

“Flynn?”

He turned to see Cassandra sitting up in her cot, rubbing her eyes sleepily. There was something very childlike about her appearance, wrapped in a baby blue robe with a loose, messy ponytail.

“Are you leaving again?”

The sad look in her eyes when he nodded reminded him why he always tried to avoid the younger Librarians whenever he left.

“Is it because of us?” she asked, clearly meaning herself, Stone, and Ezekiel. “Why you never stay?”

Flynn felt his heart break a little bit more, which always surprised him because thought that by now there would be nothing left to break.

“Of course not. I just…I’m not used to this yet. I’m used to being alone.”

“So were all of us.”

He knew that because he saw a little bit of himself in each of them. Cassandra reminded him of the wide-eyed wonder he once looked upon the world of magic with, but in more recent years had been replaced with Stone’s trust issues and Ezekiel’s cockiness. The fact that the three of them were able to work so well together was a marvel to him, a puzzle he had yet to realize didn’t need solving.

He looked past her and Cassandra followed his gaze over her shoulder towards Eve’s sleeping form and it became clear that his intention had been to slip away without saying goodbye to either of them.

“I asked Jenkins before, but…promise me that you’ll make sure she takes care of herself.”

“We will.”

His chest tightened. This was what Eve had been missing in those three months apart from the other Librarians. They had formed a bond stronger than he had realized…while he had been away. He had been too stubborn and too selfish to want to contact the others during those months after getting the Library back and going their separate ways because somewhere inside he had this gnawing feeling he didn’t belong in the group that they had become in his absence. They didn’t need him. Eve didn’t need him. She had them.

“Be careful, Flynn,” Cassandra said. “You know where we are if you need us.”

Her words were sweet and caring, but they weren’t the words that he wanted to hear. He missed those four words from Eve. _Come back alive, Librarian._ He missed her kissing him and filling him with a fire that spurred him on until he got to see her again. He missed whatever he and Eve had had before, whatever he had messed up so badly.

He hoped that there would be a way to fix it after this thing with Prospero was finally over, even though a little voice in the back of his head told him that he would just find something else to run away from her to.

With a deep breath, Flynn opened the doors and nodded at Cassandra, not wanting to say the actual word _goodbye_. She waved her hand lightly with a sad smile and then he was gone.

It wasn’t until a few hours later he realized he had accidentally pocketed the photo from Eve’s desk.


End file.
